Arts
Shatterer of glass ceilings
Reviewing the Prado’s joint exhibition of Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana in the Art Newspaper three years ago, Brian Allen…
Metal fatigue
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything worse than Mötley Crüe in Sheffield. Nothing more tuneless, empty, vapid and dismaying.…
This was England
In advance, The Gallows Pole: This Valley Will Rise was touted as a radical departure for director Shane Meadows. After…
All quiet on the western front
Zoe Strimpel talks to the anti-Putin Russian artists who have been cancelled since the invasion of Ukraine
One kind of masterpiece
It’s strange the world of classics and demi-classics and popular classics we inhabit. Right at the moment there’s the chance…
Snapshots from the edge
This month I’ve been venturing into the further reaches of modern dance – obscure territory where I don’t feel particularly…
Bring up the bodies
Margaret Mitchell on the ethics of museums of anatomical specimens
Inside story
Back once more to our favourite unhappy place: the dystopian future. And yet again it seems that the authorities have…
Hoists, HD and horses
Scheduling open-air concerts in mid-May in northern Europe is a triumph of hope over experience. I last spent time with…
Lost worlds
One so often hears about famous people who are horrible when they think no one important is looking – barking…
Brief encounters
Brokeback Mountain, a play with music, opens in a scruffy bedroom where a snowy-haired tramp finds a lumberjack’s shirt and…
A fight to the Finnish
When I went into the Sisu screening I knew only that it was a Finnish film, so was expecting an…
Station to station
Exiting Peckham Rye station, you’re not aware of it, but standing on the platform you can see a mansard roof…
Back to black
Michael Hann on the most enduring of pop subcultures
Strange bedfellows
What a whirlwind the world of the arts can be. Gabrielle Carey who changed forever the image of teenage girlish…
Death on the Nile
The most controversial aspect of Netflix’s new drama-documentary Queen Cleopatra – not least in Egypt – was the casting of…
Girl’s world
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is an adaptation of Judy Blume’s seminal young adult novel (1970) about an…
Top gear
Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh,…
Ladies first
In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the…
Irish ayes
I was listening the other week to a solo album by an ageing rock guitarist, once terrifically famous. It was…
How do I hate thee?
A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a…
Florid flummery
Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring…
Me and Mr Jones
Adam Sweeting talks to the documentary-maker Nick Broomfield about the forgotten Rolling Stone
Rattle and HM
It’s funny to think that at the very moment when King Charles was going through his Coronation, pledging service and…
